While attaining clarity in statistical mechanics was a significant achievement in its own right, Jaynes' statistical mechanics is important in another regard as well: it shows that statistical mechanics results from an application of inferential methods. From this viewpoint, statistical mechanics is not a theory that describes the mechanics of a physical system — it is a theory about processing the information we possess about a physical system. This begs the question of whether statistical mechanics is a unique theory in this regard, or are other theories of physics amenable to being treated within this framework? Are the laws of nature firm and mechanical, or is it as John Wheeler [1]} once said:
